NVME Drive Blazing Hot

My NVME drive in my old Acer 17 always ran 50C and pushed 60s. I added a heat sink and it helped a little. Yesterday it went crazy. I pulled it, put it in an external without the case. Plugged in a USB on PC2 and tried to copy user files. It would heat up and fail. Now I can't even get it to finish populating file explorer. Blazing hot to touch.

Looking for an ice pack to move the files.

Probably going to need "take ownership" to access the user files.

Continuing . . .

Windows 7 Install To NVME SSD

I need to fine tune this description but . . .

Stuff you need:
1. This will insert USB 3 and NVME drivers into the Windows 7 ISO
https://www.gigabyte.com/Support/Utility/Motherboard?kw=windows+usb+installation+tool&p=1
This is for Gigabyte AMD boards. My board is Asus and yes Asus makes a version of this utility . . . and if anyone can figure out how to use it - let me know 😎

2. ImDisk Toolkit (If you don't have a thumb drive handy or want to speed things up) (hint: check the "removable media" box) (Or just use a flash drive and skip this step) It took 15 minutes on a RAM drive so good luck with a real thumb drive.

This Is An Outstanding Utility

You may wish to not install shortcuts and context menu items. Access ImDisk through control panel.

If flash drive is needed check "removable" otherwise leave unchecked.

3. ImgBurn (The driver insertion process extracts the ISO and you need to rebuild the ISO) (hint - etfsboot.com is the file to make the ISO bootable)

4. WinSetupFromUSB to create a multiple OS installation flash drive.
If you already have a multi boot flash drive with Win 7 install files, you can easily remove that file by deleting the setup files for Win 7 and editing the menu with Boot Ice. Then add the newly created version.

My NVME arrived today. Windows installed flawlessly. 😎😎😎
(If you don't count trying to find a Win7 LAN driver for a new motherboard. I had to use a USB WiFi dongle . . .)
I installed Win 7 first and updated so was stuck with MBR. Set BIOS to no UEFI.
Have only boot drive connected during install (old but true advice). You want the boot drive to be drive 0 in case you desire to convert to GPT later.
If installing 7 first or simply updating an existing Win7, you will have MBR. If you simply must have GPT for some reason - and your motherboard supports UEFI - Window 10 can convert MBR to GPT without data loss.

Why do I care?

Windows 7 is easily authenticated as genuine and updated to Windows 10.
If . . .
1. You have a product key sticker
...Remember to look inside the battery compartment 😎
2. Or use this crazy method.  (Which is phenomenal)
...Using this method - Once Win 10 gets authorized, create an image. I tried reinstalling and the key Win 10 was using would not allow reinstall. I had to do the whole Win 7 setup dance again. Could have been a fluke but an image would save time.
3. On the other hand . . .
. . . We could use
. . .slmgr scripts (which actually work!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wkHPQicR6s&t=196s
Smgr scripts last for limited periods. Not sure about auto renew yet.

To check your activation type
Window Key + R
slmgr.vbs /dli
If you have use the slmgr method you will see a result like this . . .

If it shows a partial product key you are golden with life long authentication.

4. Alternatively you can install an Auto KMS like Windows Toolkit or FrostRose (kmspico). Be careful where you download. (Hint = kmspico for Office 10 "psw 2016)

5. Or just buy a cheap key for around $15.

If  "Change Producy Key" is not showing . . .
C:\Windows\System32> slmgr.vbs -ipk "INSERT-YOUR-PRODUCT-KEY"

User folders on different drive. 

I resisted upgrading my existing PCs because I keep my user folders on drive D. Crazy thing I can't remember if Win 10 upgrade recognized that my user folders were on D: or if I needed to move the C: folders after upgrade. The good news is, it must have been no big deal or I would have remembered. I think Win 10 just recognizes your folders are not on C: and respects the setup.

SSD Benchmarks Two Different PC's and More

A $24 Kingston A400 on USB3

(Different PC's will vary widely with same drive.)

If you are so lucky to have a mobo that handles Nvme

(Not impressive but a cheap one.)

Acer Predator G9-791 Adding NVME

My Acer Predator G9-791 came with a Liteon 128 GB M2 SATA. I wanted to try an NVME and bought a cheap ADATA 256 GB SX6000NP.

I originally bought the NVME and a PCIe card for a desktop but the motherboard could not boot to it. Experience is a good teacher. A little research would have served me well.

I inserted the NVME into the original slot and the Liteon in the stacked slot above the NVME. It booted to the original Liteon without BIOS change and I cloned to the NVME. I selected the NVME in BIOS and booted to it. So far so good. But Windows assigned C: to the Liteon and H:(for some reason) to the NVME.

Stacking the drives made the ADATA run hot and throttle (I assume)

I pulled the liteon and Windows assigned C: to the ADATA. The drive ran much cooler and speed improved.

This was an improvement over the original Liteon. I would be interested to see what a Samsung would do.

Was it worth the trouble? It feels a little snappier. I suppose some function would benefit but I have not done much yet. I don't have the outrageous speeds of some NVME drives. It satisfied my curiosity of installing it, so that is something.

SSD Alignment and Provisioning

(I stopped the first test midway due to painful slowness)

After installing my new bargain basement ($49.99 after rebate) OCZ Trio N150 240GB, the read speeds were abysmal. I used AOMEI Backupper to clone the current OS.

First I fixed "over provisioning", which is simply leaving 7-10% unallocated space on the hard drive. I did not screen shot the results but it improved 10 to 20 MB/s. There is some controversy to this.

Then I fixed the alignment. I used AOMEI Partition Assistant to fix the alignment. The results were impressive. Minitool Partition Wizard also works for alignment.

This was done in my bottom feeding $250 Dell Optiplex 7010 Mini Tower i5. Dell disabled RAID in BIOS so I question if a PCIe NVMe would boot. Decided simple SATA SSD was sufficient.

Align Hard Drive Partition

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard
or
Minitool Partition Wizard

It's free.

Check the alignment with AS-SSD

Also free.

I used it on an old Raptor drive and it worked. It trashed the drive letter and I used Windows install disk (USB actually) to fix. It recognized the problem on it's own and fixed it without any input from me.

Sadly I did not benchmark before fixing so don't know if it helped.

Good Guide For SSD Instal

http://www.disk-partition.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-1.html

I don't agree with all of it.

 Use software for your brand of drive. Ocz software is non-existent.

Also these:
http://ssd-life.com/eng/download-ssdlife.html
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/news_cats.php?cat_id=2

And this if your alignment is not correct:
http://www.disk-partition.com/free-partition-manager.html
or
https://www.minitool.com/partition-manager/

SSD Benchmark Results

I am running AS SSD Benchmark on my SSD drives.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_asssdbenchmark/

I haven't been here in awhile. Here is a cheap Nvme boot drive result.

I have hesitated using the write benchmarks but really want to know.
(We really no longer worry about writing to SSD)

Plextor PX-128M3, Intel Core i5 2500K @ 3.30GHz, ASRock Z77 Pro3

OCZ Agility2, Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8400, Gateway IMV (U2E1)
4K read speeds are way too low and sequential writes are too low. The bus is SATA 300. Running 1.35 firmware most current is 1.37 so needs updating.

For comparison, here is an ATTO benchmark:

Here is the Hitachi 320 GB 5400 RPM in the same laptop:

SSD Software

Using an SSD? You will probably benefit from these two little programs.

Reminder for installing:
1. Update the firmware of the SSD because it will likely trash any data.
2. Set BIOS for AHCI before installing Windows. You can easily change this in registry later if you forget.

SSD Life grab the free portable version. It is so encouraging to see that you SSD is still at 100%. How accurate is this? Who knows but it makes me feel better.

Tweak-SSD install and do all the tweaks. Saves doing them manually. All the little switches should be green. If you have a small amount of ram you may not want to turn off the page file. You should get more ram and turn it off. (Yes, turning off page file only helps things to load faster and isn't that what we want?)

You can go through numerous blog posts and lists of tweaks and learn all about what helps and what does not, or you can just run Tweak-SSD and forget about it.

While I'm at it, let me say I am an SSD convert. Any system I use on a regular basis has and will have an SSD. They are that good and that fast. Expensive you say? Not when you consider they can extend the life of that older system by making it feel like a cutting edge new one. I've even used the "I wouldn't touch one" model and it performed well.

I still use them as a boot drive and redirect the user files to a standard hard drive but this may not be necessary. My SSD's will probably outlive me.

SSDs are not created equal

I suppose the motherboard/controller makes some difference but SSDs vary greatly in performance. The disappointing Samsung performance is running on a 3GB Intel controller which could be the issue.

Here is my first one. It is in my notebook and I am very happy with it but it is not top shelf. The good news is it is a larger drive and I could feel good about installing some programs on it because I really don't want it to live forever. Real world performance from my user perception is pleasantly fast and responsive. My notebook is a decent Intel dual core so it was a good performer but this SSD really brought it to life.

My second one is a Plextor M3 Series PX-128M3 for $99 which performs much better. I have not timed the boot to Windows desk top but we are talking seconds. It runs on an i5-2500K overclocked to 4000 and the speed is blazing. 

My third and soon to be installed somewhere is a SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC064B/WW 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC. User experience reports are impressive if my luck holds. I am looking forward to the fun. I paid $64 from Newegg. They had a 256 for $190 and its reads are reported to be 700 vs 500 but the way I set these up I do not need that large a boot drive. Yes, the larger drives could be considered a "better deal" in dollars per GB but why pay for more than you need. I will probably symbolic link the program folders on this one in addition to the users folder even though it is large enough to have a good supply of programs in addition to the operating system. I'm still hung up on not writing to the drive.

Here is the Samsung and it is disappointing compared to the Plextor M3. It starts out fine but I don't understand the severe drop. Normally the speed variations are due to another program's drive access but both drives on the 3GB controller show large variations. The drive on a 6GB controller is constant across the drive. Also the Samsung is a gen 3 drive and showing as gen 2 so I question how accurate PCWiz is at reading the controller and drive separately but it does read the controller correctly as opposed to reading the drive only. 

Plextor M3 Series PX-128M3 Adventures

I grabbed a Plextor M3 for $99 after rebate. I don't have machine I want to put this in but couldn't pass it up. I keep looking for the right price on a new motherboard and cpu but nothing yet.

Flashing the 1.5 firmware to the Plextor was easy. The download is a bootable ISO which must be burned to a CD. I unhooked the SATA cable from one drive and hooked it (and power) to the SSD. With bios set to AHCI the drive was not recognized but changing to IDE worked. Now to wait for a system deal ....

Found here and will be back when I set up the Plextor M3.

It's a winner.

Installing SSD on AMD - Underwhelming Performance

I should give an intro in case someone reads this. Following is what I went through on my first SSD install. My conclusions are:

Edit: After using the ssd now for several days I am more and more impressed with the speed benefits on my Intel notebook. Even though my ssd is sata2 and not achieving speeds I see posted elsewhere even for sata2, the system is noticeably snappier. Programs install fast and load fast. Gimp for instance, which can load slowly on Windows, loads very rapidly. And that is with the Users folder on the Hard Drive, where Gimp keeps the fonts, scripts and plug-ins. It would be even faster if Users were on the SSD but that is something we want to avoid..

1. If using AMD, performance will be less impressive than with Intel.
2. Notebooks benefit more, they normally do not have huge fast drives. But the improvements I seed with my notebook makes me believe any system would benefit greatly from a properly tweaked SSD. It does take some work to get right and much of that work is not so much for speed but to save the drive from writes to the drive.
3. I just put a Plextor M3 in a i-5 2500k desktop and it's blazing fast. I'm sold on SSD.
4. I have not used RAID on SSD but posted speeds are enviable. (2 x 60 RAID 0 anyone?) Smaller ssd's are slower than larger ones but RAID0 would more than make up for the reduction. Notebooks are limited for drive space but most 17 inch notebooks can take 2 drive plus if you threw out the DVD drive you could RAID the two native slots and put a hard drive in the DVD slot. I usually have a desktop DVD around and portables are dirt cheap.
5. Keep tweaking to minimum, the obvious big culprits, and avoid tweaking programs.
6. 30GB (maybe even 16) may be enough if Programs and Users are mklinked to a secondary HD
7. With my 250GB ssd I am going to let programs install on ssd. I will manually direct certain (maybe most) huge programs to install on the secondary HD.
8. No need to turn off Recycle Bin because no additional writes are involved. Desktop is in Users folder.
9. Symbolic link User folder off C: drive.to D: or other. This is a handy way to set things up anyway. It keeps the OS small for imaging and quick restore if something goes wrong down the road.
10. Move Internet Explorer cache (Chrome is already in User folder).
11. I did turn off indexing. I use "Everything" to search anyway and Winkey still finds essential things.
12. I changed the System temp and tmp variables off the SSD as well.
13. ***Turn off page file? I can't make up my mind. If you have been running with a page file and turn it off, things will probably feel faster. Maybe this is due to a fragmented page file. I turned mine back on because Company of Heroes wanted it and I didn't see much difference. Ether way works fine.
14. Win7 does several of the tweaks we read about but not the ones above.
15. See further down on specific tweaks right after Windows install.

Programs:

SSD-Life free portable is program that claims to evaluate the remaining life of the SSD.

EaseUS is a great free cloning tool. Get it from Major Geeks, not from EaseUS.

Linux firmware flash for OCZ

Use diskpart to check offset

HDTune to test speed because it does not do excessive disk writes.

PCWizard reads the controller speed.

Here we go:
Defragged the crap out of my OS and shrunk it to fit on the SSD comfortably when imaged.

Hooked up the OCZ Agility2 and could see it in Windows but OCZ tools can't see it to flash most recent.

Windows registry says AHCI mode. (this is the way it will read on AMD if AHCI enabled)

I suspect it is the crappy AMD AHCI drivers.
Get new AMD AHCI drivers here.
Installed new AMD drivers, OCZ Tools still does not see it.
Installed Windows standard AHCI drivers, OCZ Tools does not see it.
(in case you are wondering how to change to the Windows driver)
Right click the driver in Device Manager and choose update, then choose from list.

How am I going to update the firmware? Linux? Who is running this railroad?

Let's see if trim is recognized. Yep, good old CrystalDiskInfo.

Speed is underwhelming:

Went here and am trying the Linux route.

It worked. Firmware updated.

But speed is still a yawn.

Ok, it beats my Samsung but not by much.

I don't know whether this is due to older gen. ssd or AMD's pathetic performance but give me a Raptor any day. And no need to baby Raptors. (Checked my old Raptor 74GB and only does 70's transfer so maybe not. It is SATA 1.5) I wish I would have tried a 60 GB for $60 instead of 250 for $250 but oh well. My laptop is Intel, maybe I will try it in there. Raid zero seems the key to hair splitting speed with SSD.

So let's put our Windows image on the ssd and see how happy we are. Standard procedure, Windows won't recognize the image. Time to pull out Macrium for a new image. I wonder if we will experience the dreaded "misalignment" problem.

No problem, Macrium free will not clone.  EaseUS will and is cloning as we speak. I did the 100 system reserve first and then the main Win7 partition. I started with no partition on the ssd. It is adding some irritating unallocated in front of the partitions for some reason, maybe to "align".

If you want to verify the alignment (e.g. for a SSD where you are not certain whether the proper alignment was done), you use the following commands.


Rumor has it that Win7 fresh install aligns itself correctly.

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n
List partition

Now you should see a result like this.

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 59 GB 1024 KB - but 64KB or any number divisible by 4 is also good

The offset (in KBs) has to be divisible by 4.


Note: Some readers and users of this tutorial got confused because the alignment numbers in a typical Windows7 installation are shown as:

1024KB for the 100MB partition
101MB for the next partition - which is most likely the C partition

They think that 101MB is not divisible by 4 and that there must be a problem. But that is not so. If you convert 101MBs into KBs (multiply by 1024), then the number is divisible by 4 and the partition is aligned.
credit SevenForums

The clone booted and if divisible by 4 is the test I am aligned. I had hoped the speed would pick up but no.

Kudos to EaseUS for free and easy cloning. I had not used it before and was impressed. Now I need to move all or most of the write files off the ssd or it will become even more useless. I am not impressed. Good to get that out of my system. Just when I though I was immune to tech hype, too.

So, I moved the ssd to my Notebook with a fresh install of Win7-64.

I must admit it is far better than the Hitachi 7200 second drive. I wish I could find my old spec. pics. This all seems under performing but I can't remember. I guess notebooks are the place for ssd but you need one that can handle two drives. Intel Matrix isn't doing much so I suppose one needs a later chipset.

I chose way too large a drive. 60GB would have been perfect because I moved users and programs through junction. Now I need a larger second drive than 320GB but will wait for prices to drop again. Here is the size of the OS now:

Pretty fair HD index.

I did some tweaks, cleared the index from the ssd, no pagefile and others. OMG he turned off pagefile, danger, danger! I ran an ssd tweaker and let it auto tweak (I wonder what that did?). Version 2 is here.

It helped. I should have been more patient and tested after each tweak but I just did a bunch of crap and hoped for the best Not sure what the peak/valley stuff is but something is accessing the drive. 200 is a satisfying upper number to be hit repeatedly and the burst rate is more what I would have expected. Windows experience was not impressed and that number did not change.

All things feel smooth and snappy but fresh installs will do that.

Problem: after my recent use of "ssd fresh" tweaker, updates will not install. One tweak too many? I will need to set this up again. I think I may just mklink the User folder, make sure it is not defragging and maybe turn off indexing. If the ssd dies while handling programs folders then it will be a good, honorable death.

Now I have "protected" Users/Programs folders on D: that I can't remove. Yes I have tried the "takeown" stuff. Linux on USB should make quick work of it. I have moved all my data in some copy to new, was painful. Not all of the copy worked and I suspect it was due to some of the permission stuff I was struggling with. I didn't check. Deleting these protected folders is a snap with usb linux but be sure you have a backup if you need the files later. Also Linux will place these files in .trash-999 folder on your hard drive. Remember to delete them from trash before you leave Linux or you will have the same permission problems if you try to delete them from Windows.

My new setup I did much less tweaking:

Done:

move and mklink Users (like this) (don't use quotation marks)

Turn off write cash, both boxes checked (had no effect)

Clear index from disk properties. (something I always did on XP)

Disable Windows Search service.

Disable defrag service and turn off schedule.

System Restore off (honestly, has this ever worked anyway?)

disable hibernate powercfg -h off (I always did this anyway) delete hiberfil file if present

Move Chrome temp internet files

--user-data-dir="D:\Temporary Internet Files" (stupid Chrome) not needed because in Users folder anyway 

prefetch off (seems to have been done by Windows) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Find the "EnablePrefetcher" key on the right-hand pane, right click it, hit modify and change 3 to 0 and hit OK. 

page file ( moved to HD, I have 8GB RAM) turn off pagefile and much better
Disable Superfetch service

The highs are higher but it is a wild ride. Windows tends to do things early on to optimize so maybe that is causing the dips. I left programs on the ssd but I had nothing running.

Offset: Perfect

I might clean this post up later but at least I can go back and see some of what not to do. I will avoid tweaking programs which I credit breaking my update ability.

Just Bought My First SSD

Windows 7 and SSDs: Setup secrets and tune-up tweaks | ZDNet

1. Make sure you have the latest firmware. Because firmware updates wipe out all data on the drive, you must do this operation as the first step; make sure to back up all existing data first. You’ll need to check with the drive manufacturer or the OEM, depending on whether you purchased the drive as a retail upgrade or as part of an OEM PC. Follow the instructions to complete the firmware update; this typically requires booting from removable media such as a USB flash drive.

2. Set the disk controller to AHCI mode. In the system BIOS, set the SATA controller for Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) operation before installing Windows. This step is crucial. Using the legacy IDE or ATA mode prevents you from installing the proper disk controller driver later and will result in reduced performance.

This article has some important information for initial set up.

SSD Drive Project

As of yet I am holding out on buying an SSD but I don't know how much longer I can hang on. So far the price/size issue has held me at bay but one of these days I will cave and my impulse buying will get the best of me. So I am starting to gather information.

Ed Bott has some basic info here on step by step install.

Sandforce seems to be a big deal so look for it.

Moving the profile to another drive is wise. (It would seem one would want some programs on the ssd so they load faster) Why move? To preserve space (among other things) on the smaller SSD drive.

One problem I have is my first install will be on an envida chipset and they do not play well together. Using the drivers from Microsoft is probably the answer.

Still holding out. Prices are below $2 per GB but I want it closer to $1, then I will get 120GB.

Move the Users Directory in Windows 7

Move the Users Directory in Windows 7:

LifeHacker has a good explanation of using junctions

This seems to be an easier way to move profiles with junctions.

This is the same as Lifehacker but clearer (and the one I used)

This is the essentials:

2 cautions:
1. X:\ is probably the virtual repair drive so don't try to perform action with X as an option.
2. Two word lables need to be in quotations "Program Files", or you will get a syntax error.

Enter Recovery (be careful about drive designations)
For most users, this can be accessed by pressing F8 at boot, and choosing “Repair your computer,” but is also present on a Windows install DVD.

robocopy "E:\Users" "D:\Users" /COPYALL /MIR /XJ
robocopy "E:\Program Files" "D:\Program Files" /COPYALL /MIR /XJ
robocopy "E:\Program Files (x86)" "D:\Program Files" /COPYALL /MIR /XJ

rmdir "E:\Users" /S /Q
rmdir "E:\Program Files" /S /Q
rmdir "E:\Program Files (x86)" /S /Q

mklink "E:\Users" "D:\Users" /J
mklink "E:\Program Files" "D:\Program Files" /J
mklink "E:\Program Files (x86)" "D:\Program Files (x86)" /J

Now, reboot. If all goes well, you should see something similar to the image below. Both Program Files and Users directories still exist, but now possess a small shortcut icon.

I did this and it works. I am still confused about seeing the folders on C:  Yes the Users (etc) folder has a junction shortcut symbol but the folders under Useres do not. I presume they are symbolic.